Next Todd went to the phone and dialed, my signed yellow sheet in his hand. I could hear him feed my name, driver's license and social security numbers to the person on the other end of the line. About a minute went by and Todd hung up.
"No priors on you, or any that the State knows about". Todd said.
The .45 auto was mine, but for one last thing, Todd showed me the safety features, and I signed the white sheet while my debit card ran. I signed my receipt and I became a firearm owner, one of the estimated 150 million in this country. My pistol (re)joined America's arsenal of 200 million firearms, the estimated current domestic stock of firearms. My chances of dying of handgun homicide jumped 2.5%. My chances of dying of suicide increased as well. I also brought on the additional risk of dying or being wounded by a Negligent Discharge (ND) from my new pistol.
1 comment:
I do hope that in the intervening period you've managed to establish that the oft-made claim (oft-made by people like Arthur Kellermann) that gun ownership increases your chance of becoming the victim of intentional violent death is pretty much bunk.
There does appear to be a casual relationship between homicide and suicide on the one hand and gun ownership on the other, in that people who rightly consider themselves to be at a heightened risk of being murdered (e.g. drug dealers) and people who are contemplating suicide end to acquire firearms, but the relationship is that high-risk behavior leads to gun ownership, not vice-versa.
Correlation does not necessarily imply causation, and even if it does, you have to be sure which way the causation runs.
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